Fifty years after federal troops escorted Terrence Roberts and eight fellow black students into an all-white high school, he says the struggles over race and segregation still are unresolved.

"This country has demonstrated over time that it is not prepared to operate as an integrated society," said Roberts, who is a faculty member at Antioch University's psychology program.

He and the other students known as the Little Rock Nine will help the city observe Central High School's 50th anniversary this week with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton.

For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked nine black students from enrolling at a high school with about 2,000 white students. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 -- and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate -- Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.

The showdown soon became a test for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who sent members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division in to control the angry crowds. It was the first time in 80 years that federal troops had been sent to a former state of the Confederacy.

The Little Rock Nine stand with Arkansas first lady Ginger Beebe at a ceremony on Sunday.

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

Whatever happened to that one lady racist, who is seen in a famous LR9 pic just shouting something rude to one of the LR9 as she enters her school?

She was Hazel Bryan...

Quote:

She became famous in 1957 as the result of an iconic photograph showing her shouting at Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, during the integration crisis. In her later life, she would work with Eckford to further the goals of racial harmony. She appeared with Eckford and the rest of the Little Rock Nine on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of integration at Central High